MPC Creative creates immersive taste sensation with R/GA for Guinness

The first VR experience to engage all five senses is launched in UK-wide Tesco stores, with creative direction by Pete Conolly at MPC Creative

This unique tasting experience, produced by MPC Creative in collaboration with R/GA to promote the latest Guinness beers, immerses users in a bespoke 360 environment comprising colours, shapes and sounds that have been scientifically proven to enhance the flavour profiles of each beer.

In the experience, people hear the voice of Peter Simpson - master brewer at The Guinness Open Gate – who tells them when to smell and taste the beers. An intelligent cup with an inbuilt Arduino chip recognises these movements and triggers a range of multi-sensory cues that enhance the flavours and aromas.

“VR has often promised the possibility of engaging all five senses at once”, says Creative Director Pete Conolly at MPC Creative. “This is the first application to do that for a commercial brand. The challenge here was to design a visual and audio landscape that would complement a specific set of flavours, and which would elicit a kind of synesthetic response from the user, a joining or crossing of all senses at once.”

The experience was developed in collaboration with Professor Charles Spence, an award winning food and flavour scientist and lecturer at Oxford University, whose expertise in this area ensured that the innovative VR experience combined a range of colours, textures, movements and sounds, all aimed at enhancing the flavour profiles of each beer when tasted. He provided MPC Creative with his research and tasting notes to help form the campaign design; establishing that the sight, touch and sound of food and drinks can have large effects on perceived tastes.